Religious pilgrimage is a sure sign of humanity. According to Romanian Patriarch Daniel, there are many reasons for pilgrimage and it has deep spiritual significance when it is experienced properly and properly understood. The pilgrim is a person who wishes to visit and worship in biblical holy places, tombs of martyrs, relics of saints, miraculous icons or places where famous spiritual elders live.
1.The main reasons for pilgrimage are the following:
- Worship is a visual reminder of places where the wonderful love and action of God is manifested for people and through people. The worshiper is someone who wants to touch the holy place or the holy relics in which and through which the sanctifying presence of God has only manifested itself in the strongest degree, so that the worshiper can strengthen his faith and love for God.
- Therefore, worship is performed to enhance prayer and spiritual life.
- Worship is often understood as a spiritual act of thanksgiving to God for all the gifts received from Him; thus it becomes in itself both a healing action and a thanksgiving offering.
- Worship also includes an act of repentance for sins and is crowned with confession of all sins committed, with prayers for forgiveness and salvation of the soul.
- Worship can also be motivated by a strong desire to receive God’s help to accomplish something important or to heal from physical or mental illness.
2.The profound spiritual significance of worship is that it gives both spiritual benefit to the personal life of the pilgrim and to the life of the Church.
Worship as seeking and tasting the sanctity of our existence. Through worship, man and God seek and meet each other in a relaxed and mystical way. Abraham left his homeland, Ur of the Chaldees, and traveled far away to the land that the Lord had promised him, Canaan (Gen. 12: 1-5).
Religious worship is the search in this world for that which is not of this world – the Kingdom of God, of which the Lord Jesus Christ Himself says, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God” (Matt. 6:33) and “My kingdom is not of this world”(John 18:36).
Worship also has a prophetic meaning, which is described by a modern theologian as follows: “These communities of people (ie worshipers) who sing their faith, symbolize and establish the multifaceted community of people (nations) for whom it is written. in the last chapter of the book of Isaiah and in the visionary book of Revelation.As of Abraham’s day, all believers are worshipers traveling through the wilderness to the Promised Land, step by step they realize that Christ accompanies them on the way and invites them to recognize Him in the breaking of bread (Luke 24:35).
Worship teaches us that the mission of the Church is to seek holiness and its desire to realize the fullness of life in the Lord. A tourist trip is not a pilgrimage if it does not become a mystical journey, an inner pilgrimage, an effort to get closer to God through prayer and reconciliation.
